Chapter 43

Whoa, boy. You need to back up. What about all them girls?

Oh.

Well, you remember last time ... got stabbed. I wonder ... is it stabbed when the knife is thrown?

Forensic Medicine: Clinical and Pathological Aspects

By Jason Payne-James, Anthony Busuttil, William Smock states with positivity that without continued force of arms that a thrown knife finds impediment from skin; if one is stuck without constant pressure a knife won’t penetrate very far. Hmm. Sounds fishy to me.

The girls.

Evidence proves that the pirate chief had been raiding because there were seven more than last count. Unwilling to just leave then to the mercies of the swamp, the Vellamo III loaded them and their meager belongings in the hold and reversed course. Fifty-seven youngish but pubescent girls of assorted ancestry made for a pretty crowded boat. Not intending to take 57 girls on the remainder of our round the world adventure I was taking them to the nearest civil sized civilization; Noumea. Back the way we had just come. Instead of foul winds and tacking, we were running wing and wing.

Wing and wing is a term for having the mainsails at 90 degrees to the hull ... one right and one left. The jib sails were also at 90 degrees to the hull ... one left, one right. The jib sails are assisted by a whisker pole ... sometimes called a jib pole. A good whisker set should have a supporting line above and a restraining line below. Wing and wing at a run is not something done spur of the moment. The supporting line is called a topping lift and the restraining line is called the foreguy and they need to be already rove through pulleys called blocks. Topping lift and foreguy act against each other to keep the jib sails winged out. There is a hook at either end of the whisker ... one hook fastened to the hook eye on the mast ... the outer hook is fastened to the clew of the jib ... the after guy also is fastened to the ring eye of the clew.

Well ... confused? Good.

We had 57 young women in the hold ... but that’s just where they slept. During the day the were on deck with the crew ... sunning with Inkeri ... wearing Inkeri’s clothing style ... nothing.

Oh, God.

Noumea, Grand Terre. Radio Telephony or RT is a handy tool. Before we arrived at the harbor, we requested all the local politicians to meet us at the wharf.

“It’s a surprise,” Wendy said over the microphone.

We tied up ... shooed all 57 girls ... and their meager belongings ... off the boat and made our getaway in the confusion. Then we sailed for Espiritu Santo on our way to the Solomons.

After the last war, the German possessions in the Pacific were split up and parceled out to the allies. Japan gained Germany’s islands north of the equator, the Marshall Islands, the Carolines, the Marianas and the Palaus, German Samoa went to New Zealand; German New Guinea, the Bismark Archipelago and Nauru were mandated to Australia.

Australia was interested in New Guinea; gold had been discovered. The offshore islands weren’t as interesting ... at least, not to the land down under; Japan was very interested. Japan was putting survey parties ashore in the middle of the night and picking them up a week later ... Imperial Marines ... not a single one under six feet tall and deadly.

East of San Cristobol but west of Lipe, in the middle of the night, HMAS Tattoo, an Australian destroyer signaled us to stop for inspection. The stop was a ruse.

Several radio sets were brought aboard by ships boat and we were commissioned to deliver the portable transmitters, along with pedal powered generators to assorted Australian and British plantation managers. The Vellamo III was considered to be far and away less conspicuous. She looked like a conventional trading craft, similar to the dozens that plied these waters.

We were getting close to the hot zone. Even at night the temperature in the cabins was seldom less than 100 Fahrenheit. The crew had begun sleeping under netting suspended from the booms. We were mostly anchoring on the windward side of the islands.

We made our requested deliveries throughout the Solomon Island chain and New Guinea. The plantation managers were extremely fit and young. Inkeri was much admired.